Stolan Acres  ·  Brand Board No. 01 — Lawrenceville
E·R Ellis Residential

Ellis
& Residential

I sell where I live.

Founder Maren Ellis · Solo Agent 2026
Territory Lawrenceville · Bloomfield · Garfield 10th Ward
Body of work Closed in this neighborhood 47
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iThe for-statement

Ellis Residential is the brand for buyers and sellers who want a Lawrenceville insider, not a real estate agent.

The single load-bearing decision of the brand. Every visual choice and every line of copy that follows answers to it.

iiSoul

The work was specific. The brand was not.

Maren has spent nine years selling real estate in one neighborhood. She lives four blocks from Butler Street. She knows the woman who runs the Italian deli on 38th, the family that restored the Victorian on Fisk, and the guy who runs the metal-fab shop in the back of the alley off Atlantic. Her listings sell faster than the market average. Her business comes from referrals and walk-ups from people who recognize her at the coffee shop.

Until now her marketing has not. The website said your trusted real estate advisor. The listing photos came from the brokerage's Compass-template generator. The brochures looked like every other realtor's brochures from Sewickley to Squirrel Hill.

Ellis Residential is the brand that lets the marketing finally sound like the agent.

She knows which side of the block to bid on, and she will tell you why.
iiiPhotography

Editorial. Not transactional.

Natural light. Golden hour preferred. Lived-in interiors with the residents' own furniture. Real places. Real people. Real grain.

01Butler · golden hour · October
02Restored Victorian · Fisk Street
0338th & Butler · in conversation
04Original casework · window detail
05February snow · row houses
06Closing day · first keys

We photograph

  • Row house facades along Butler, Atlantic, Fisk
  • Interiors with the resident's actual furniture
  • Corner bars, bakeries, the deli on 38th
  • Architectural detail: original windows, brick patterns, hardware
  • Lawrenceville at specific times of year
  • Hands holding keys at closing

We never photograph

  • Drone shots of any kind
  • HDR-processed exteriors with punched skies
  • Staged interiors that look like a furniture catalog
  • Maren in a blazer holding a SOLD sign
  • Suburban cul-de-sacs
  • Any stock photography ever
ivColor

Six colors. No luxury palette.

Pulled from Lawrenceville at golden hour in October. Hover for the usage rules.

Headline accents. Hover states. Used sparingly to anchor a page, never as a flood.
Lawrenceville Brick
#8C3B2E
Section dividers. Secondary headlines. Quiet weight against brick.
Oxidized Copper
#5C6B5E
Body text. Dark backgrounds. Warm-leaning, never pure black.
Ink Black
#0F0E0D
Default background. Never pure white. Pure white is the SaaS-landing tell.
Interior Wall
#EFEAE0
Captions, borders, metadata labels. The quietest color in the system.
Weathered Concrete
#A89F94
Background washes. Adds warmth without competing.
October Sky
#D6CCB8

Never used in this brand

  • Pure white #FFFFFF (use Interior Wall)
  • Pure black #000000 (use Ink Black)
  • Sotheby's cream-and-gold luxury palette
  • Compass turquoise #02A1E2
  • Keller Williams red #CC0000
  • Any HDR-punched sky blue
  • Pastel gradients of any kind
  • Italic serif as a primary headline tell
vTypography

Three faces. No defaults.

Editorial didone display, warm humanist serif body, technical mono for metadata. Not the AI-default stack.

Display · Italiana / PP Editorial New (production)
Lawrenceville,
block by block.
Body · Lora / PP Neue Montreal (production)

Maren has spent nine years selling real estate in one neighborhood. She knows which side of the block to bid on, and she will tell you why. The work is specific. The brand should be too.

Metadata · IBM Plex Mono

EST. 2026  ·  LAWRENCEVILLE  ·  PITTSBURGH  ·  10TH WARD

01

Display set in regular weight. Never bold. Bold is the franchise look.

02

Display in mixed case. All caps is the bro-brand tell.

03

Body at 17 to 18px on web. Line-height 1.65 to 1.75 for warmth.

viVoice

The brand sounds like the agent.

She closed three houses on the same block last quarter. The block has a bakery on one corner and a body shop on the other. That is the kind of thing you only know if you live there.
I sell where I live.
Hero line / About
From the inside.
Signature
Block by block.
Editorial / Letter
Lived-in, not staged.
Listing intro

Words this brand will not use

luxurystunningmust-seedream homeexquisitepremiertrusted advisorpassionate about real estatelifestyleelevatedcuratedboutiqueyour journey

viiPersuasion · The G.A.P.

How this brand convinces.

Persuasion as a sequence, not a sales pitch. Name the pain. Show one piece. Rip the gap open. Close the only door left.

I
Name the pain

You decided you want Lawrenceville. Now you are scrolling Zillow looking at listings written by agents who could be selling in any city. Every description says "charming" and "character." None of them tell you which block of Butler is walkable after 9 pm.

II
Show one piece

The street matters more than the price. Atlantic between 39th and 40th is a different neighborhood than Atlantic between 50th and 51st, even though Zillow groups them under the same heat map.

III
Rip the gap

An agent who lives somewhere else is selling you a zip code. You came here for a neighborhood. The gap between the two is the deal you will or will not regret in two years.

IV
Close the door

Call me. Or stop by the coffee shop on Butler. I will know your name by the second visit.

The four claims this brand defends
  • Closed more deals in Lawrenceville last year than any other agent in this brokerage.
  • Lives four blocks from Butler Street.
  • Will tell you if the house is wrong for you, even if it costs her the commission.
  • Knows the contractor who restores original windows without breaking the casework.
viiiPositioning

Narrow on purpose.

The brand has chosen a side. Lawrenceville and the East End first. Anyone else is referred out, with care, to a partner agent.

For

Buyers committed to Lawrenceville or the East End. Sellers who have lived in the neighborhood eight years or longer.

Not for

Investor-flippers. Out-of-market referrals. Buyers who say they love the character but want a new-construction high-rise feel inside. The Compass corporate aesthetic crowd.

ixRisk flags

Four ways the brand collapses if ignored.

Hipster-neighborhood cliche

TriggerPhotography leans too hard on industrial textures: exposed brick walls, Edison bulbs, distressed wood.

MitigationPhotography direction is editorial documentary, not lifestyle. If a shot could appear in a coffee shop ad, kill it.

Marketing reverts to brokerage stock

TriggerMaren accepts the brokerage's free Compass-style listing photos for speed.

MitigationPhotography is core to the brand. Brokerage stock is a deal-breaker, not a shortcut.

Narrow positioning alienates rest of Pittsburgh

TriggerA buyer comes in who wants Squirrel Hill or Mt. Lebanon.

MitigationAcceptable trade. Refer those buyers to a vetted partner agent.

Brand collapses if Maren moves

TriggerMaren leaves Lawrenceville.

MitigationFeature, not bug. The brand IS Maren in Lawrenceville. If she moves, she rebuilds or sunsets.

xNext 90 days

What changes starting Monday.

Three months. Three priorities per month. Each with a deliverable and a success signal.

Month 01

Build the photo system.

  • Hire a Pittsburgh editorial photographer for the founding shoot. Six listings, two interiors, one full Butler Street walk at golden hour.
  • Rewrite all current MLS descriptions using the voice rules. No "luxury," no "stunning," no "must-see."
  • Launch ellisresidential.com as a one-page site. No bio page yet.
Month 02

Plant the editorial flag.

  • Launch the Lawrenceville Letter. One Substack post per month. One block, one story, one listing analyzed.
  • Replace every brokerage-template listing photo with Ellis Residential photography. No exceptions.
  • Refuse one off-target client in writing using schema language. Notice what changes.
Month 03

Compound the signal.

  • Host the first Walk. Three-hour Lawrenceville walk for a vetted out-of-market buyer. Document it visually.
  • Build the referral page for non-Lawrenceville buyers. Two trusted partner agents named.
  • Run the first close-anniversary postcard. A real handwritten note to clients who closed twelve months ago.